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Vocabulary > Space > Moon
Title
Galileo Images the Moon
Full Description
This view of the Moon's north pole is a mosaic assembled from 18 images
taken
by Galileo's imaging system through a green filter as the spacecraft flew by
on
December 7, 1992.
The left part of the Moon is visible from Earth;
this region includes the dark,
lava-filled Mare Imbrium (upper left); Mare Serenitatis (middle left);
Mare Tranquillitatis (lower left), and Mare Crisium, the dark circular feature
toward the bottom of the mosaic.
Also visible in this view are the dark lava plains of the Marginis and Smythii
Basins at the lower right.
The Humboldtianum Basin,
a 650-kilometer (400-mile) impact structure partly
filled with dark volcanic deposits,
is seen at the center of the image.
The Moon's north pole is located just inside the shadow zone,
about a third of
the way from the top left of the illuminated region.
Nasa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/December-2006
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/LARGE/GPN-2000-000473.jpg
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2000-000473.html
NASA Center: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Image # : PIA00130
Date : 12/14/1992
Added 26.4.2007
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_picture_candidates/December-2006
"This is a picture of my mother holding
the Washington News Paper
on Monday, July 21st 1969
stating 'The Eagle Has Landed Two Men Walk on the Moon'.
The photo was taken by
my grandfather." -- the original uploader
Date 21 July 1969(1969-07-21)
Source Originally uploaded by User:Rufus330Ci on 23 January 2006
Author Jack Weir (1928-2005)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Land_on_the_Moon_7_21_1969-repair.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11
When I asked my father, Don Baida, to talk about this photo,
here's what he said: "As a photographer, I knew that this was a once in a
lifetime shot that I didn't want to miss.
This was such a unique happening
- the first time someone stepped onto another
world
- that I wanted to make sure my family was part of it."
My parents woke up three-year-old me, and here I am on my mom' lap watching
history unfold.
Postcards From the Field
NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/366416main_1969_0720_sm_full.jpg
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/postcards/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html
Photograph: AFP
Trying to see the future
President Nixon had prepared a speech
he would have given if the Apollo 11
mission had ended in tragedy.
Fortunately, it didn't. But, says disaster expert Lee Clarke,
only by imagining
catastrophe can we cope with it.
The Guardian G2
p. 13 Wednesday November 9, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,14493,1637498,00.html
NYT
August 7, 2006
Scientists Chip Away at Mysteries of the
Moon NYT
8.8.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/08/science/space/08moon.html
This detailed geologic map of Schrödinger
basin,
which formed when a huge object struck the
moon,
reveals a patchwork of lunar material,
including the peak ring (inner brown ring),
recent volcanic activity (red),
cratering (yellow) and plains material (dark
green and kelly green).
Credit: NASA/Scott Mest
The Moon Puts on Camo
08.30.2010 - A new geologic map of the
moon's Schrödinger basin
paints an instant, camouflage-colored portrait
of what a mash-up the moon's surface is
after eons of violent events.
The geologic record at Schrödinger is still
relatively fresh
because the basin is only about 3.8 billion years old;
this makes it the moon's second-youngest
large basin
(it's roughly 320 kilometers, or 200 miles, in diameter).
NASA
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/LRO/news/camo-moon.html
Related
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/map-moon-craters
moon
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/moon/index.html
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Moon
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/planets/moonpage.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/system/topicRoot/Men_on_the_moon/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/map-moon-craters
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fromthearchive/story/0,12269,1002715,00.html
"supermoon"
A perigee moon is visible
when the moon's orbit position is at
its closest point to Earth
during a full moon phase, making the so-called super moon look larger than
normal.
The closest and therefore the biggest and brightest full moon of the year.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/05/supermoon_the_perigee_moon_of.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2012/may/06/supermoon-rises-in-pictures
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/may/05/supermoon-lunar-close-pass
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2011/mar/20/super-moon-in-pictures
sending a humanoid robot to the Moon
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/science/space/02robot.html
Nasa's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Map of moon's craters
reveals our satellite's cataclysmic past
2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/sep/17/map-moon-craters
Boston Globe > Big Picture >
Images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), launched in June, 2009
http://lunar.gsfc.nasa.gov/
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/01/images_from_the_lunar_reconnai.html
astronaut Alan L. Bean - the fourth man to walk
on the Moon
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/us/25astronaut.html
moonrise
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/aldrin-b.html
full moon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/13/astronomy-space-full-moon
perigee
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/13/astronomy-space-full-moon
Apollo missions through the astronaut's eyes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/gallery/2009/may/28/apollo-moon-landing-astronauts?picture=348195743
Apollo 8 mission to the Moon: the first human journey to
another world
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/dec/20/space-exploration-usa-earth-moon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/30/apollo-8-mission
Apollo 11 > Mission to the Moon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/apollo-11-moon-landing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/02/apollo-space-missions-eugene-cernan
http://www.nytimes.com//interactive/2009/07/13/science/20090714-apollo11-interactive.html
Apollo 11 > NYT readers' photos from 1969
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/15/science/space/20090715moon-readers_index.html
Apollo 11 > Voices: Recalling July 20, 1969
http://www.nytimes.com//interactive/2009/07/13/science/20090714-voices-interactive.html
Man on the Moon > Apollo 11 Flight Plan
1969
http://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/document.html?doc=19&title.raw=Apollo%2011%20Flight%20Plan
NASA > Apollo 40th Anniversary
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/apollo/40th/index.html
Cagle cartoons > Moon landing anniversary
July 2009
http://www.cagle.msnbc.com/news/MoonLanding40/main.asp
Apollo flights / The Apollo program
http://history.nasa.gov/apollo.html
Apollo 11 mission > film
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/25/apollo-11-anniversary
Apollo 11 > NASA film > Moonwalk
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/hd/apollo11.html
Apollo 11
1969
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/07/remembering_apollo_11.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/may/25/apollo-11-anniversary
http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/kippsphotos/apollo.html
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo11.html
Apollo 11 moon landing / Landing the Eagle
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/video/2009/jul/14/apollo-11-eagle-moon-landing
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/system/topicRoot/Moon_Landing_Anniversary/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/apollo-11-moon-landing
Neil A. Armstrong
1969
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/about/bios/neilabio.html
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/armstrong-na.html
Buzz Aldrin and the U.S. flag on the Moon
1969
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/ABSTRACTS/GPN-2001-000012.html
History in the making: Guardian and Observer report Apollo 11
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/interactive/2009/jul/15/apollo-11-moon-guardian-archive
Times > men on the Moon
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/archive/men_on_the_moon/
"That's one small step for man but one giant leap for mankind"
July 1969
http://archive.timesonline.co.uk/tol/viewArticle.arc?
articleId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1969-07-21-01-001&pageId=ARCHIVE-The_Times-1969-07-21-01
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/21/opinion/l21moon.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19wolfe.html
Apollo program
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/news/science/topics/apollo_program/index.html
In a speech to a joint session of the US Congress on 25 May 1961,
President John F Kennedy sets the goal,
"before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him
safely to the Earth"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/audio/2009/jul/02/kennedy-speech-moon-apollo
Google > Maps > Moon
http://moon.google.com/
NASA > Moon > Images
http://spaceplace.nasa.gov/en/educators/teachers_moon_images.shtml
NASA library of images
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/
NASA > Images > The mineral Moon
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_819.html
NASA > Moon, Mars and beyond
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/index.html
NASA > Constellation Program
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/constellation/main/index.html
moon base
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-12-04-nasa-moon-base_x.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/space/article/0,,1964428,00.html
map / map
lunar probes
http://grin.hq.nasa.gov/BROWSE/lunar-probes_1.html
LCROSS orbiter / probe
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/10/science/space/10moon.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/oct/08/nasa-moon-lcross-water-crater
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/07/moon-lcross-nasa-mission
Smart-1
probe 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1864316,00.html
lunar landing
lunar lander
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2006-12-04-nasa-moon-base_x.htm
Boston Globe > Big Picture > Lunar eclipse of December 10, 201
December 12, 2011
The longest lunar eclipse in over ten years animated the night
sky on December 10.
The red hue resulted from the sun's light passing through the earth's
atmosphere.
Viewers in Asia had the best view of the total eclipse,
while those watching in Europe saw part of it at moonrise,
and North Americans caught part of it as the moon set.
It was not visible in South America or Antarctica.
The next total eclipse will occur in 2014.
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/12/lunar_eclipse_of_december_10_2.html
Lunar eclipse viewed from around the world - in pictures
Skywatchers from Brussels to Beirut
turn their gaze to the moon as it turns red during the eclipse
June 2011
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2011/jun/16/lunar-eclipse-moon-gallery-pictures
total lunar eclipse
February 2008
During the eclipse,
the Earth lined up directly between the Sun and the Moon,
casting Earth's shadow over the Moon.
http://www.reuters.com/news/pictures/slideshow?collectionId=1597&galleryName=All%20Collections#a=1
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2028499420080221
lunar eclipse - the earth prevents the sun’s rays from reaching
the moon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/gallery/2010/dec/21/moon-solar-eclipse
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/eclipse/index.html
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/eclipse/dec20-21_eclipse.html
http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/OH/OH2010.html#LE2010Dec21T
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/12/101220-lunar-eclipse-winter-solstice-2010-science-shortest-day-first/
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/12/20/are-you-watching-tonights-eclipse/
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/solar/lunecl.html
partial lunar eclipse
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/27/us/AP-US-Partial-Lunar-Eclipse.html
water on the moon
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/27/opinion/l27moon.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/opinion/20marshall.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/jul/10/spaceexploration.usa
pop music > lunar tunes
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2009/jul/20/moon-eclipses-sun-pop
lunar art > iconic works inspired by the moon
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2009/jul/21/moon-art-exhibitions-history
Time Vol. 94 No. 4
July 25, 1969
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,1101690725,00.html
Op-Ed Contributor
One Giant Leap to Nowhere
July 19, 2009
The New York Times
By TOM WOLFE
WELL, let’s see now ... That was a small step for Neil
Armstrong, a giant leap for mankind and a real knee in the groin for NASA.
The American space program, the greatest, grandest, most Promethean — O.K. if I
add “godlike”? — quest in the history of the world, died in infancy at 10:56
p.m. New York time on July 20, 1969, the moment the foot of Apollo 11’s
Commander Armstrong touched the surface of the Moon.
It was no ordinary dead-and-be-done-with-it death. It was full-blown purgatory,
purgatory being the holding pen for recently deceased but still restless souls
awaiting judgment by a Higher Authority.
Like many another youngster at that time, or maybe retro-youngster in my case, I
was fascinated by the astronauts after Apollo 11. I even dared to dream of
writing a book about them someday. If anyone had told me in July 1969 that the
sound of Neil Armstrong’s small step plus mankind’s big one was the shuffle of
pallbearers at graveside, I would have averted my eyes and shaken my head in
pity. Poor guy’s bucket’s got a hole in it.
Why, putting a man on the Moon was just the beginning, the prelude, the
prologue! The Moon was nothing but a little satellite of Earth. The great
adventure was going to be the exploration of the planets ... Mars first, then
Venus, then Pluto. Jupiter, Mercury, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus? NASA would
figure out their slots in the schedule in due course. In any case, we Americans
wouldn’t stop until we had explored the entire solar system. And after that ...
the galaxies beyond.
NASA had long since been all set to send men to Mars, starting with manned
fly-bys of the planet in 1975. Wernher von Braun, the German rocket scientist
who had come over to our side in 1945, had been designing a manned Mars project
from the moment he arrived. In 1952 he published his Mars Project as a series of
graphic articles called “Man Will Conquer Space Soon” in Collier’s magazine. It
created a sensation. He was front and center in 1961 when NASA undertook Project
Empire, which resulted in working plans for a manned Mars mission. Given the
epic, the saga, the triumph of Project Apollo, Mars would naturally come next.
All NASA and von Braun needed was the president’s and Congress’s blessings and
the great adventure was a Go. Why would they so much as blink before saying the
word?
Three months after the landing, however, in October 1969, I began to wonder ...
I was in Florida, at Cape Kennedy, the space program’s launching facility,
aboard a NASA tour bus. The bus’s Spielmeister was a tall-fair-and-handsome man
in his late 30s ... and a real piece of lumber when it came to telling tourists
on a tour bus what they were looking at. He was so bad, I couldn’t resist
striking up a conversation at the end of the tour.
Sure enough, it turned out he had not been put on Earth for this job. He was an
engineer who until recently had been a NASA heat-shield specialist. A baffling
wave of layoffs had begun, and his job was eliminated. It was so bad he was
lucky to have gotten this stand-up Spielmeister gig on a tour bus. Neil
Armstrong and his two crew mates, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins, were still on
their triumphal world tour ... while back home, NASA’s irreplaceable team of
highly motivated space scientists — irreplaceable! — there were no others!
...anywhere! ... You couldn’t just run an ad saying, “Help Wanted: Experienced
heat-shield expert” ... the irreplaceable team was breaking up, scattering in
nobody knows how many hopeless directions.
•
How could such a thing happen? In hindsight, the answer is obvious. NASA had
neglected to recruit a corps of philosophers.
From the moment the Soviets launched Sputnik I into orbit around the Earth in
1957, everybody from Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson on down looked
upon the so-called space race as just one thing: a military contest. At first
there was alarm over the Soviets’ seizure of the “strategic high ground” of
space. They were already up there — right above us! They could now hurl
thunderbolts down whenever and wherever they wanted. And what could we do about
it? Nothing. Ka-boom! There goes Bangor ... Ka-boom! There goes Boston ...
Ka-boom! There goes New York ... Baltimore ... Washington ... St. Louis ...
Denver ... San Jose — blown away! — just like that.
Physicists were quick to point out that nobody would choose space as a place
from which to attack Earth. The spacecraft, the missile, the Earth itself, plus
the Earth’s own rotation, would be traveling at wildly different speeds upon
wildly different geometric planes. You would run into the notorious “three body
problem” and then some. You’d have to be crazy. The target would be untouched
and you would wind up on the floor in a fetal ball, twitching and gibbering. On
the other hand, the rockets that had lifted the Soviets’ five-ton manned ships
into orbit were worth thinking about. They were clearly powerful enough to reach
any place on Earth with nuclear warheads.
But that wasn’t what was on President Kennedy’s mind when he summoned NASA’s
administrator, James Webb, and Webb’s deputy, Hugh Dryden, to the White House in
April 1961. The president was in a terrible funk. He kept muttering: “If
somebody can just tell me how to catch up. Let’s find somebody — anybody ...
There’s nothing more important.” He kept saying, “We’ve got to catch up.”
Catching up had become his obsession. He never so much as mentioned the rockets.
Dryden said that, frankly, there was no way we could catch up with the Soviets
when it came to orbital flights. A better idea would be to announce a crash
program on the scale of the Manhattan Project, which had produced the atomic
bomb. Only the aim this time would be to put a man on the Moon within the next
10 years.
Barely a month later Kennedy made his famous oration before Congress: “I believe
that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade
is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.” He
neglected to mention Dryden.
INTUITIVELY, not consciously, Kennedy had chosen another form of military
contest, an oddly ancient and archaic one. It was called “single combat.”
The best known of all single combats was David versus Goliath. Before opposing
armies clashed in all-out combat, each would send forth its “champion,” and the
two would fight to the death, usually with swords. The victor would cut off the
head of the loser and brandish it aloft by its hair.
The deadly duel didn’t take the place of the all-out battle. It was regarded as
a sign of which way the gods were leaning. The two armies then had it out on the
battlefield ... unless one army fled in terror upon seeing its champion
slaughtered. There you have the Philistines when Little David killed their
giant, Goliath ... and cut his head off and brandished it aloft by its hair (1
Samuel 17:1-58). They were overcome by a mad desire to be somewhere else. (The
Israelites pursued and destroyed them.)
More than two millenniums later, the mental atmosphere of the space race was
precisely that. The details of single combat were different. Cosmonauts and
astronauts didn’t fight hand to hand and behead one another. Instead, each
side’s brave champions, including one woman (Valentina Tereshkova), risked their
lives by sitting on top of rockets and having their comrades on the ground light
the fuse and fire them into space like the human cannonballs of yore.
The Soviets rocketed off to an early lead. They were the first to put an object
into orbit around the Earth (Sputnik), the first to put an animal into orbit (a
dog), the first to put a man in orbit (Yuri Gagarin). No sooner had NASA put two
astronauts (Gus Grissom and Alan Shepard) into 15-minute suborbital flights to
the Bahamas — the Bahamas! — 15 minutes! — two miserable little mortar lobs! —
then the Soviets put a second cosmonaut (Gherman Titov) into orbit. He stayed up
there for 25 hours and went around the globe 17 times. Three times he flew
directly over the United States. The gods had shown which way they were leaning,
all right!
•
At this point, the mental atmospheres of the rocket-powered space race of the
1960s and the sword-clanking single combat of ancient days became so similar you
had to ask: Does the human beast ever really change — or merely his artifacts?
The Soviet cosmo-champions beat our astro-champions so handily, gloom spread
like a gas. Every time you picked up a newspaper you saw headlines with the
phrase, SPACE GAP ... SPACE GAP ... SPACE GAP ... The Soviets had produced a
generation of scientific geniuses — while we slept, fat and self-satisfied!
Educators began tearing curriculums apart as soon as Sputnik went up,
introducing the New Math and stressing another latest thing, the Theory of
Self-Esteem.
At last, in February 1962, NASA managed to get a man into Earth orbit, John
Glenn. You had to have been alive at that time to comprehend the reaction of the
nation, practically all of it. He was up for only five hours, compared to
Titov’s 25, but he was our ... Protector! Against all odds he had risked his
very hide for ... us! — protected us from our mortal enemy! — struck back in the
duel in the heavens! — showed the world that we Americans were born fighting and
would never give up! John Glenn made us whole again!
During his ticker-tape parade up Broadway, you have never heard such cheers or
seen so many thousands of people crying. Big Irish cops, the classic New York
breed, were out in the intersections in front of the world, sobbing, blubbering,
boo-hoo-ing, with tears streaming down their faces. John Glenn had protected all
of us, cops, too. All tears have to do with protection ... but I promise not to
lay that theory on you now. John Glenn, in 1962, was the last true national hero
America has ever had.
There were three more Mercury flights, and then the Gemini series of two-man
flights began. With Gemini, we dared to wonder if perhaps we weren’t actually
pulling closer to the Soviets in this greatest of all single combats. But we
held our breath, fearful that the Soviets’ anonymous Chief Designer would trump
us again with some unimaginably spectacular feat.
Sure enough, the C.I.A. brought in sketchy reports that the Soviets were on the
verge of a Moon shot.
NASA entered into the greatest crash program of all time, Apollo. It launched
five lunar missions in one year, December 1968 to November 1969. With Apollo 11,
we finally won the great race, landing a man on the Moon before the end of this
decade and returning him safely to Earth.
•
Everybody, including Congress, was caught up in the adrenal rush of it all. But
then, on the morning after, congressmen began to wonder about something that
hadn’t dawned on them since Kennedy’s oration. What was this single combat stuff
— they didn’t use the actual term — really all about? It had been a battle for
morale at home and image abroad. Fine, O.K., we won, but it had no tactical
military meaning whatsoever. And it had cost a fortune, $150 billion or so. And
this business of sending a man to Mars and whatnot? Just more of the same, when
you got right down to it. How laudable ... how far-seeing ... but why don’t we
just do a Scarlett O’Hara and think about it tomorrow?
And that NASA budget! Now there was some prime pork you could really sink your
teeth into! And they don’t need it anymore! Game’s over, NASA won,
congratulations. Who couldn’t use some of that juicy meat to make the people
happy? It had an ambrosial aroma ... made you think of re-election ....
NASA’s annual budget sank like a stone from $5 billion in the mid-1960s to $3
billion in the mid-1970s. It was at this point that NASA’s lack of a philosopher
corps became a real problem. The fact was, NASA had only one philosopher,
Wernher von Braun. Toward the end of his life, von Braun knew he was dying of
cancer and became very contemplative. I happened to hear him speak at a dinner
in his honor in San Francisco. He raised the question of what the space program
was really all about.
It’s been a long time, but I remember him saying something like this: Here on
Earth we live on a planet that is in orbit around the Sun. The Sun itself is a
star that is on fire and will someday burn up, leaving our solar system
uninhabitable. Therefore we must build a bridge to the stars, because as far as
we know, we are the only sentient creatures in the entire universe. When do we
start building that bridge to the stars? We begin as soon as we are able, and
this is that time. We must not fail in this obligation we have to keep alive the
only meaningful life we know of.
Unfortunately, NASA couldn’t present as its spokesman and great philosopher a
former high-ranking member of the Nazi Wehrmacht with a heavy German accent.
As a result, the space program has been killing time for 40 years with a series
of orbital projects ... Skylab, the Apollo-Soyuz joint mission, the
International Space Station and the space shuttle. These programs have required
a courage and engineering brilliance comparable to the manned programs that
preceded them. But their purpose has been mainly to keep the lights on at the
Kennedy Space Center and Houston’s Johnson Space Center — by removing manned
flight from the heavens and bringing it very much down to earth. The shuttle
program, for example, was actually supposed to appeal to the public by offering
orbital tourist rides, only to end in the Challenger disaster, in which the
first such passenger, Christa McAuliffe, a schoolteacher, perished.
•
Forty years! For 40 years, everybody at NASA has known that the only logical
next step is a manned Mars mission, and every overture has been entertained only
briefly by presidents and the Congress. They have so many more luscious and
appealing projects that could make better use of the close to $10 billion
annually the Mars program would require. There is another overture even at this
moment, and it does not stand a chance in the teeth of Depression II.
“Why not send robots?” is a common refrain. And once more it is the late Wernher
von Braun who comes up with the rejoinder. One of the things he most enjoyed
saying was that there is no computerized explorer in the world with more than a
tiny fraction of the power of a chemical analog computer known as the human
brain, which is easily reproduced by unskilled labor.
What NASA needs now is the power of the Word. On Darwin’s tongue, the Word
created a revolutionary and now well-nigh universal conception of the nature of
human beings, or, rather, human beasts. On Freud’s tongue, the Word means that
at this very moment there are probably several million orgasms occurring that
would not have occurred had Freud never lived. Even the fact that he is proved
to be a quack has not diminished the power of his Word.
July 20, 1969, was the moment NASA needed, more than anything else in this
world, the Word. But that was something NASA’s engineers had no specifications
for. At this moment, that remains the only solution to recovering NASA’s true
destiny, which is, of course, to build that bridge to the stars.
Tom Wolfe is the author of “The Right Stuff,” an account of
the Mercury Seven astronauts.
One Giant Leap to
Nowhere, NYT, 18.7.2009,
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/opinion/19wolfe.html
The mission that changed everything
Forty years ago the US launched its Apollo 8 mission to the
Moon:
the first human journey to another world.
Its astronauts captured this astonishing photograph
which revealed the fragility
and isolation of our planet.
It has become one of history's most influential images.
This is the story of how a picture transformed our view of ourselves
Sunday November 30 2008
00.01 GMT
The Observer
Robin McKie guardian.co.uk
This article appeared in the Observer on Sunday November 30 2008
on p6 of the
Features and reviews section.
It was last updated at 00.06 on November 30 2008.
It has proved to be the most enduring image we have of our
fragile world. Over a colourless lunar surface, the Earth hangs like a gaudy
Christmas bauble against a deep black background. The planet's blue disc - half
in shadow - is streaked with faint traces of white, yellow and brown while its
edge is sharply defined. There is no blurring that might be expected from the
blanket of oxygen and nitrogen that envelops our planet. Our atmosphere is too
thin to be seen clearly from the Moon: a striking reminder - if we ever needed
one - of the frailty of the biosphere that sustains life on Earth.
This is Earthrise, photographed by astronaut Bill Anders as he and his fellow
Apollo 8 crewmen, Jim Lovell and Frank Borman, orbited the Moon on Christmas
Eve, 1968. His shot, taken 40 years ago next month, has become the most
influential environmental image, and one of the most reproduced photographs, in
history. Arguably, his picture is also the most important legacy of the Apollo
space programme. Thanks to this image, humans could see, for the first time,
their planet, not as continents or oceans, but as a world that was 'whole and
round and beautiful and small,' as the poet Archibald MacLeish put it.
Certainly, Earthrise is a striking reminder of Earth's vulnerability. We may
have forgotten the men who risked their lives getting to the Moon and who
explored its dead landscape - a 'beat-up' world as they put it - but the view
they brought back of that glittering blue hemisphere continues to mesmerise.
'Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark,' the US
astronomer, Carl Sagan, noted. 'There is no hint that help will come from
elsewhere to save us from ourselves.' The opinion is shared by Sir David
Attenborough. 'I clearly remember my first sight [of the Earthrise photograph].
I suddenly realised how isolated and lonely we are on Earth.'
Indeed, says the UK space historian Robert Poole, the first popular expressions
of ecological concern can be traced to the publication of that picture: dazzling
blue ocean, the jacket of cloud and the relative invisibility of the land and
human settlement. 'It is a rebuke to the vanity of humankind,' says Poole.
'Earthrise was an epiphany in space.'
In fact, Nasa [the National Aeronautics and Space Administration] had not
intended to fly to the Moon in 1968. Its lunar hardware was still unproven and
Apollo 8 was slated merely to test equipment in low Earth orbit. However, that
autumn, the agency was told, incorrectly, by the CIA that the Soviet Union was
preparing its own manned lunar mission. So the Apollo programme - established to
fulfil President John Kennedy's call for a US manned lunar landing by the end of
the decade - was accelerated and Apollo 8 designated for a journey to the Moon,
though there would no lander to take men to the lunar surface. That would come
on later missions.
The decision was controversial. Nasa's giant Saturn V rocket, the only launcher
capable of taking men to the Moon, had been bedevilled by flaws and instrument
failures on its two test flights. Worse, there had been the fire in 1967 in
which three astronauts - Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee - were burned
to death during a ground test of an Apollo capsule. Sending Lovell, Anders and
Borman in an almost identical spacecraft to the Moon, on an unsafe launcher, was
a gamble, to say the least.
As a result, most press conferences in the run-up to the launch were dominated
by questions about the risks the astronauts faced and, although the mission
turned out to be a success, and surpassed all subsequent Apollo missions for the
precision of its flight path and lack of glitches, it was dogged at the start by
control-room nerves and tension.
Finally, at 6.31am, on Saturday 21 December, the Saturn V - at 360ft, the
tallest, most powerful rocket ever built and for the first time carrying a human
crew - blasted Borman, Anders and Lovell into space. The launch was shattering.
'The Earth shakes, cars rattle and vibrations beat in the chest,' as Anne Morrow
Lindbergh, the writer and wife of the aviator Charles Lindbergh put it.
In the event, the rocket performed perfectly and put Apollo 8 safely into orbit.
Using a 'state-of-the-art' computer - which had less power than a modern hand
calculator - Lovell keyed in the commands that fired the launcher's third stage
and sent their craft hurtling on its three-day journey to the Moon. The
spaceship had become the first manned vehicle to slip the surly bonds of Earth
and head to another world.
The outward trip was not without its mishaps. As the astronauts settled down for
their first night in space, cramped into a craft the size of a minivan, they
found it difficult to sleep. So Borman tried a sleeping pill. This was a
mistake. A couple of hours later, he was struck by a fit of vomiting and
diarrhoea, a tricky affliction in zero gravity, as Robert Zimmerman recalls in
Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8. 'Borman, Lovell and Anders found themselves
scrambling about the cabin, trying to capture blobs of faeces and vomit with
paper towels. So much for the glamour of space flight.' Certainly, it was an
inelegant way to travel to another world.
Early on Christmas Eve, Apollo 8 reached its destination. The astronauts fired
the craft's Service Propulsion System (SPS) rocket to slow as it swept past the
Moon and the little ship slipped into lunar orbit. For its first three
revolutions, the astronauts kept its windows pointing down towards the Moon and
frantically filmed the craters and mountains below. Reconnaissance for
subsequent Apollo landings was a key task for the mission.
It was not until Apollo 8 was on its fourth orbit that Borman decided to roll
the craft away from the Moon and to point its windows towards the horizon in
order to get a navigational fix. (The capsule's astronauts still used sextants
to guide their craft.) A few minutes later, he spotted a blue-and-white fuzzy
blob edging over the horizon. Transcripts of the Apollo 8 mission reveal the
astronaut in a rare moment of losing his cool as he realised what he was
watching: Earth, then a quarter of million miles away, rising from behind the
Moon. 'Oh my God! Look at the picture over there. Here's the Earth coming up,'
Borman shouts. This is followed by a flurry of startled responses from Anders
and Lovell and a battle - won by Anders - to find a camera to photograph the
unfolding scene. His first image is in black-and-white and shows Earth only just
peeping over the horizon. A few minutes later, having stuffed a roll of 70mm
colour film into his Hasselblad, he takes the photograph of Earthrise that
became an icon of 20th-century technological endeavour and ecological awareness.
In this way, humans first recorded their home planet from another world. 'It
was,' Borman later recalled, 'the most beautiful, heart-catching sight of my
life, one that sent a torrent of nostalgia, of sheer homesickness, surging
through me. It was the only thing in space that had any colour to it. Everything
else was either black or white. But not the Earth.' Or as Lovell put it, our
home world is simply 'a grand oasis'.
Last week, I spoke to Lovell, now a vigorously healthy 80-year-old and owner of
the Lovells of Lake Forest restaurant in northern Chicago, where his son, Jay,
is chef. An experienced astronaut even before he flew on Apollo 8, he achieved
his greatest fame as commander of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission - which only
narrowly survived a fuel-tank explosion en route to the Moon in 1970. (Lovell
was played by Tom Hanks in Ron Howard's film, Apollo 13, in 1995.) 'Apollo 8 was
a high point for me without a doubt. Apollo 13 was certainly less pleasant. It
was touch and go, after all.' Nor does he fail to appreciate the importance of
that photograph. 'The predominant colours were white, blue and brown,' he
recalled. 'The green of the Earth's grassland and forests is filtered out by the
atmosphere and appears as a bluish haze from space.' The effect is to give Earth
an added, especially intense blue veneer.
'Bill [Anders] had the camera with colour film and a telephoto lens,' he said.
'That is what makes the picture. Earth is about the size of a thumbnail when
seen with the naked eye from the Moon. The telephoto lens makes it seem bigger
and gives the picture that special quality.' (Seven months later, Neil Armstrong
- standing on the lunar surface - also noted he could blot out the Earth with
his thumb . Did that make him feel really big, he was asked years later? 'No,'
the great astronaut replied, 'it made me feel really, really small.')
By Christmas Day, the whole world had become engrossed in Apollo 8's epic
journey: 1968 had been a particularly traumatic year and the planet was
desperate for a diversion. In the US, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had
been assassinated, the Vietnam War had worsened dramatically and civil and
student conflict was spreading through US cities. In Europe, the Prague 'spring'
had been crushed by Soviet tanks. People needed cheer and the realisation that
humans had reached the Moon provided that uplift perfectly.
There was a further twist to the mission's timing. Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C
Clarke's visionary epic 2001: A Space Odyssey was then showing in cinemas round
the globe. (The Apollo 8 crew had attended its Houston premiere three months
earlier.) The film ends with the embryonic Star Child hanging in space above the
Earth: a tiny, glittering blue disc very like the one that had just been
pictured by Anders. The links between Apollo 8 and 2001 went further than that,
however. The film depicts space travel as commonplace and there, to prove the
accuracy of its vision, were men orbiting the Moon. It seemed to many people -
including myself, then a university student and a space-programme devotee - that
all those dreams of science fiction writers and film-makers might soon be
realised. It was a wondrous Christmas.
Indeed, it can be fairly claimed that Apollo 8 was the real Man on the Moon
story. By the time, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin reached the Moon on Apollo 11, the
world had already got used to the idea of manned lunar flight. By contrast,
Apollo 8 took many people unawares. Certainly, you could easily argue that it,
and not Apollo 11, deserves the title of the greatest event of the 20th century.
Lovell believes that. 'I sat beside Charles Lindbergh at the launch of Apollo
11. "It's a great event," he said, "but you know you were the ones who really
spearheaded the moon programme".'
Anders, Borman and Lovell orbited the Moon 10 times. Then, as they prepared to
head back to Earth, the astronauts held a last televised press conference. Each
then took turns to read out the first 10 verses of the book of Genesis as they
skimmed, at a height of 70 miles, over the lunar surface. The Old Testament
struck many people as an odd choice for a final lunar reading. But all three (at
the time, at least) were deeply religious: Borman and Lovell were Protestants,
Anders a Catholic. None of them saw any ambiguity in reading out a version of
creation that was at complete odds with the version supported by the scientists
who had got them there. In any case, the reading went down well in America.
A few hours later, Lovell fired the SPS engine again and Apollo 8 began its
homeward journey, splashing down in the Pacific on 27 December. As the
astronauts waited to be picked up by the navy, 10ft waves pounded their craft.
Borman, once again, was sick. Apart from that, their homecoming was a triumph.
After that, Anders' colour film was processed and passed to the media. Time ran
the photograph with single word 'Dawn' while Life published a lengthy display of
images from the mission, including a poster-sized spread of the Earthrise
photograph.
Seven months later, Apollo 11 reached the lunar surface. It was the beginning of
the end for space programme. Three years later, Apollo 17 lifted off from the
Moon, the last human visit to this dead world. The US public, who had funded the
programme, tired of the Moon and turned to concerns closer to home. 'Looking
back, it is possible to see that Earthrise marked the tipping point, the moment
when the sense of the space age flipped from what it means for space to what it
meant for Earth,' says Robert Poole in his recent book Earthrise: How Man First
Saw the Earth
Humans had spent billions in an attempt to explore another world and in the end
rediscovered their own. It was a point stressed by Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison
Schmitt, one of the last men on the Moon. 'Like our childhood home, we really
see the Earth only as we prepare to leave it,' he wrote.
However, of all the efforts to sum up the story of Earthrise, the best is made
by TS Eliot in last of the Quartets:
'We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.'
• Additional research by Hermione Hoby
Fly me to the moon: The three astronauts who made history
Jim Lovell
Apollo 8 pilot (later commander of Apollo 13)
Like his Apollo 8 companions, Jim Lovell came from a modest background. He was
born on 25 March, 1928, the son of a Philadelphia coal furnace salesman who died
when Lovell was 12. As a result, Lovell had to rely on a US navy scholarship to
see him through university. He served in the Korean War before becoming a navy
test pilot and then a Nasa astronaut in 1962. He flew on two Gemini missions
before Apollo 8. Of its three crewmen, Lovell was the only one to return to
space - as commander of Apollo 13. Thus he became one of only three men to
travel twice to the Moon. Gene Cernan (on Apollos 10 and 17) and John Young (on
Apollos 10 and 16) are the others. However, of this trio, Lovell was the only
one who never made it to the surface. Although he was scheduled to land with
Apollo 13, a fuel tank explosion forced its crew to abandon their landing and to
struggle back to Earth. Today, Lovell helps run the Lovells of Lake Forest
restaurant near Chicago, where his son, Jay, is chef, and raises money to help
young students study science and become involved in the US space programme.
Bill Anders
Apollo 8 pilot
The son of a US nvay lieutenant, Anders was born in October 1933 and grew up in
San Diego, California, before becoming a jet pilot, joining the Apollo programme
in 1963. Apollo 8 was his only space mission, though he can claim to have made
as great an impact as any other seasoned space traveller on that trip: his image
of Earthrise has become the environmentalists' icon. The mission affected him
profoundly. Once a devout Catholic, he found his experience of space made a
mockery of his beliefs and he gave up religion. Anders served in a number of
senior US government offices before becoming CEO of General Dynamics. He retired
in 1994.
Frank Borman
Apollo 8 commander
Born on 14 March 1928, Borman was brought up in Tucson, Arizona, and after
graduating from West Point, served as a fighter pilot before becoming a US air
force test pilot and then an astronaut in 1962. After Apollo 8, Borman left
Nasa, joined Eastern Air Lines and eventually became its CEO in December 1975.
Borman retired from the airline in 1986. He now lives in Las Cruces, New Mexico,
where he rebuilds and flies Second World War and Korean War aircraft.
The mission that
changed everything, O, 30.11.2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/nov/30/apollo-8-mission
Total lunar eclipse turns Moon red
Thu Feb 21, 2008
7:23am EST
Reuters
LONDON (Reuters) - Thousands of hopeful astronomers around the world tried to
catch a glimpse of the year's only total lunar eclipse -- but those watching
from Britain saw little more than cloud.
Watchers from the eastern United States saw it easily Wednesday night and had
posted dozens of successful pictures on the Internet -- but by mid-morning none
had been posted from Britain, where it should have been most visible between 3
a.m. and 4 a.m. British time Thursday (10 p.m. and 11 p.m. EST Wednesday).
"It's been pretty grim," said John Mason, spokesman for the British Astronomical
Association. "There were a couple of gaps in the cloud for a couple of seconds
from where I was but nothing else."
During the eclipse, the Earth lined up directly between the Sun and Moon,
covering the latter with the Earth's shadow. Depending on atmospheric conditions
on Earth, the moon should have appeared blood red, rusty or grey.
The Royal Astronomical Society had promised a "spectacular sight", saying that
unlike a solar eclipse it could be viewed without any special equipment.
But in the event, special equipment would have been unnecessary anyway. The next
lunar eclipse will not be seen until December 2010.
"It's bad luck," said Royal Astronomical Society spokesman Robert Massey. "But
it's always one of these things when you're watching from the UK."
(Reporting by Peter Apps)
Total lunar eclipse
turns Moon red, R, 21.2.2008,
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2028499420080221
Film Takes Us Back 38 Years, to That First Walk
September 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
They are old men now. That much is obvious from the tight camera shots.
Nonetheless, it is hard to fathom: has it been 38 years since the first of them
set foot on lunar soil?
“In the Shadow of the Moon,” a documentary that premieres this week in New York
and Los Angeles, tells the story of the Apollo program and the race to reach the
moon, as President John F. Kennedy declared in 1962, “before this decade is
out.” And so, on July 20, 1969, we did.
Note the “we.” It is from one of the most powerful, lump-in-the-throat moments
of this exceptional film. Michael Collins, who orbited the moon during the
Apollo 11 mission while Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. took their
lunar module down to the surface, said that after the flight, on the
around-the-world tour that NASA sent them on, “Wherever we went, people, instead
of saying, ‘Well, you Americans did it!’ — everywhere, they said, ‘We did it!
We, humankind, we, the human race, we, people, did it!’ ”
His voice breaks slightly in the telling, and he says: “I thought that was a
wonderful thing. Ephemeral, but wonderful.”
The film, by the British director David Sington, has the backing of Ron Howard,
the director of “Apollo 13.” It tells a story that has been told before, of
course, in books and movies like the miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon.”
The stories will be told again in the coming documentary, “The Wonder of it
All,” which takes a similar, in-their-own-words approach, and in others that
will surely arrive as the 40th anniversary of the first moon landing rolls
around the summer after next.
Astronauts make tough reviewers — they tend to prefer accuracy to drama — but
three Apollo astronauts interviewed for this article had praise for Mr.
Sington’s work.
Alan L. Bean, an astronaut on Apollo 12, said reaching the moon “has
implications for young people, so they see what they can do, what their
generation can do.”
Mr. Bean continued, “This is a nice thing — this is what our generation can do.
What is your generation going to do? It’s got to be better than this. Maybe it
could be an inspiration.”
Harrison H. Schmitt, the geologist astronaut who made the last landing on the
moon in 1972 with Eugene A. Cernan (and who later served a term in the United
States Senate), said, “I’m not a good judge of entertainment filming and
programming; I would do all of that differently, and go broke.”
But, Mr. Schmitt added, he would have liked to see a greater focus on the
scientific benefits of the missions, including advances in geology and the rapid
improvements in existing technologies like microelectronics that were pushed by
the program.
In the film, the personalities of the less famous astronauts come through. Mr.
Collins is funny and engaging, and Mr. Cernan is both precise and passionate.
Charles M. Duke Jr. is eloquent in talking about how he felt being the capcom,
or capsule communicator, on Apollo 11, as well as about his experiences on
Apollo 16. Edgar Mitchell, who flew on Apollo 14, speaks with an almost mystical
awe about his flight.
The astronauts also talk about seeing “the whole circle of the Earth” at once,
as Mr. Duke puts it. “That jewel of Earth was just hung, up in the blackness of
space,” he says, holding his hands out, cupped, as if to cradle the sphere.
Will the film appeal to those who did not experience the thrill of having
watched the first steps on the moon live on television? Mr. Aldrin said he hoped
the documentary would catch on. “I am looking for things that are going to
stimulate the American people” to find the value in space exploration, he said,
“the inspirational, the innovational and just the human quest to discover.”
Of the surviving moon walkers, only Mr. Armstrong declined to go on camera. That
is not unusual, since he is known to avoid the spotlight. Mr. Sington exchanged
a few e-mail messages with Mr. Armstrong, who explained, as Mr. Sington
recalled, that “if you want to talk to me about my personal experience, walking
on the moon, you’re missing the point.”
After all, Mr. Armstrong had said, “One small step for a man,” not “one small
step for me,” Mr. Sington recalled. “He represents everybody.”
And so, Mr. Sington said, he came to accept Mr. Armstrong’s decision, and to
have Mr. Armstrong’s as the only face that is not updated. “He’s the one
astronaut who stays young,” he said. “Somehow, to me, that’s satisfying.”
Is there in that, perhaps, a tiny bit of rationalization?
Mr. Sington laughed. “If he’d said, ‘Yes, I’ll do an interview,’ I’d have been
delighted,” he said.
Film Takes Us Back 38
Years, to That First Walk, NYT, 4.9.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/science/space/04moon.html
Total Lunar Eclipse Early Tuesday
August 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:48 p.m. ET
The New York Times
DENVER (AP) -- The Earth's shadow will creep across the moon's surface early
Tuesday, slowly eclipsing it and turning it to shades of orange and red.
The total lunar eclipse, the second this year, will be visible in North and
South America, especially in the West. People in the Pacific islands, eastern
Asia, Australia and New Zealand also will be able to view it if skies are clear.
People in Europe, Africa or the Middle East, who had the best view of the last
total lunar eclipse in March, won't see this one because the moon will have set
when the partial eclipse begins at 4:51 a.m. EDT. The full eclipse will begin an
hour later at 5:52 a.m. EDT.
An eclipse occurs when Earth passes between the sun and the moon, blocking the
sun's light. It's rare because the moon is usually either above or below the
plane of Earth's orbit.
Since the Earth is bigger than the moon, the process of the Earth's shadow
taking a bigger and bigger ''bite'' out of the moon, totally eclipsing it before
the shadow recedes, lasts about 3 1/2 hours, said Doug Duncan, director of the
University of Colorado's Fiske Planetarium. The total eclipse phase, in which
the moon has an orange or reddish glow, lasts about 1 1/2 hours.
The full eclipse will be visible across the United States, but East Coast
viewers will only have about a half-hour to see it before the sun begins to rise
and the moon sets. Skywatchers in the West will get the full show.
In eastern Asia, the moon will rise in various stages of eclipse.
During the full eclipse, the moon won't be completely dark because some light
still reaches it around the edges of the Earth. The light is refracted as it
passes through our atmosphere, scattering blue light -- which is why the sky is
blue -- but sending reddish light onto the moon.
''When someone asks why is it (the moon) red, you can say because the sky is
blue,'' Duncan said.
The next total lunar eclipse occurs Feb. 21, 2008, and will be visible from the
Americas, Europe and Asia.
------
On the Net:
NASA Lunar Eclipse Page:
http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/LEmono/TLE2007Aug28/TLE2007Aug 28.html
Total Lunar Eclipse Early Tuesday,
NYT, 26.8.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Lunar-Eclipse.html
On This Day - April 18, 1970
From The Times archive
Nasa’s Moon mission became an ordeal
after
an oxygen tank exploded,
cutting electricity, light and water supplies
when the
craft was 200,000 miles from Earth.
The crew had to use the Sun to navigate,
landing in the Pacific Ocean four days later
Houston, April 17: The three Apollo 13
astronauts, Captain James Lovell, Mr Fred Haise and Mr John Swigart, were last
night on board the recovery ship Iwo Jima after a perfect landing in the
Pacific.
Within three minutes of the capsule landing in the sea helicopters were over it
in what is probably the fastest recovery in the history of the space programme.
After the three men emerged from the helicopter on the ship’s deck a band played
The Age of Aquarius. They will spend the night on board and fly to Samoa today.
They were smiling but looked tired.
At a White House briefing President Nixon, defending the space programme, said
hazards had to be expected. The failure did not cloud the programme’s future.
A review board has been set up to investigate the failure in the spacecraft.
Apollo 13’s emergency return journey to Earth ended with a splashdown at 19 hr
7min 46sec B.S.T. with complete accuracy four miles south of the recovery ship.
The spacecraft entered the atmosphere 400,000 ft above the earth, its heat
shield glowing white hot at 7,000F.
As it hurtled towards Earth at 25,000 miles an hour the command module skipped
twice on the denser layers of the atmosphere like a stone across a pond.
For more than three tense minutes after re-entry the spacecraft was blacked out
of radio contact by the friction it generated in the upper part of the
atmosphere. Controllers at mission control waited anxiously for the first words
that the astronauts had survived.
On
This Day - April 18, 1970, Times, 18.4.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp
On This Day:
March 25, 1965
From The Times archive
American space probe Ranger 9
took some of
the first pictures of the Moon
which were broadcast back to Earth
AMERICA watched today when the Ranger 9 space
probe to the moon sent back live pictures of its descent into the pock-marked
crater Alphonsus, near the centre of the lunar face. For about 15 minutes,
anyone with a television set could have an astronaut’s eye view of the landing,
from 1,300 miles above the point of impact.
It was exciting, if frightening, sensation.
Ranger 9, the last of the photographing moon probes, was launched last Sunday
afternoon from Cape Kennedy, Florida.
This morning it switched on its six television cameras and sent back to earth
between 5,000 and 6,000 photographs and then landed four miles from the target
point.
For the final minutes of its flight its electronic signals were converted into a
form suitable for showing on ordinary television, giving millions of viewers an
opportunity to see things which no human eye had ever before discerned.
The first picture, covering an area 500 miles square, showed three large flat
craters. These were arranged in triangular formation, the crater Ptolemaeus, 85
miles in diameter, at the top; Alphonsus, 50 miles across, on the left and
Albategnius, 60 miles wide, on the right.
At five minutes from impact, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
expert reminded us that “the Ranger spacecraft is falling towards the moon”. At
a distance of 177 miles away, two minutes from impact, the surface looked like
pumice stone, or a magnified view of the human skin. At one minute from impact,
we were only 90 miles away and still the pictures were sharp and clear.
Then suddenly the screen went black. Ranger had done her work, landing 20
seconds later than intended.
On This Day: March 25, 1965, Times, 25.3.2005,
http://www.newsint-archive.co.uk/pages/main.asp
|
